The Holocaust Never To Be Forgotten

From Booklist Muchman was born in Berlin in 1933. In March 1939, she, her parents, and four relatives fled to Brussels to escape the Nazi regime. In 1942, Germany occupied Belgium, and Muchman's parents brought her and her cousin to the home of two Catholic women for safekeeping. Her parents were killed; she survived and was ultimately brought to the U.S., where she was adopted by an aunt and uncle in Chicago. Muchman grew up believing that her Jewish parents had abandoned her. In 1990, a box was discovered in her uncle's home that contained faded letters, documents, and old photographs; the letters had been written by her parents in the 1940s. "I finally was able to discover, in a deep, fundamental way, that my parents had loved me more than life itself," the author relates. This important book brings the enormous magnitude of the Holocaust down to a very personal level. It contains poignant black-and-white family photographs and reproductions of passports and other documents.

Six million-- a number impossible to visualize. Six million Jews were killed in Europe between the years 1933 and 1945. What can that number mean to us today? We can that number mean to us today? We are told never to forget the Holocaust, but how can we remember something so incomprehensible? We can think, not of the numbers, the statistics, but of the people. For the families torn apart, watching mothers, fathers, children disappear or be slaughtered, the numbers were agonizingly comprehensible. One. Two. Three. Often more. Here are the stories of thode people, recorded in letters and diaries, and in the memories of those who survived. Seen through their eyes, the horror becomes real. We cannot deny it--and we can never forget. ‘Based on diaries, letters, songs, and history books, a moving account of Jewish suffering in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.’ —Best Books for Young Adults Committee (ALA). ‘A noted historian writes on a subject ignored or glossed over in most texts. . . . Now that youngsters are acquainted with the horrors of slavery, they are more prepared to consider the questions the Holocaust raises for us today.’ —Language Arts. ‘[An] extraordinarily fine and moving book.’ —NYT. Notable Children's Books of 1976 (ALA) Best of the Best Books (YA) 1970–1983 (ALA) 1976 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction Best Books of 1976 (SLJ) Outstanding Children's Books of 1976 (NYT) Notable 1976 Children's Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC) 1977 Jane Addams Award Nominee, 1977 National Book Award for Children's Literature IBBY International Year of the Child Special Hans Christian Andersen Honors List Children's Books of 1976 (Library of Congress) 1976 Sidney Taylor Book Award (Association of Jewish Libraries)

The book contains the full text of the Holy See's document, with its introduction by Pope John Paul II himself, as well as the explanatory address to the American Jewish Committee by Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, the president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews. It also contains essays by two important theological thinkers, one a Jew and one a Catholic, both deeply concerned with interreligious dialogue. Rabbi Leon Klenicki sums up a number of Jewish perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of the statement, while noted theologian Avery Dulles, S.J., explores the various Catholic responses to the Holocaust in the past and how this document breaks new ground.

"In the wake of the Second World War, how were the Allies to respond to the enormous crime of the Holocaust? Even in an ideal world, it would have been impossible to bring all the perpetrators to trial. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to prosecute some. Most people have heard of the Nuremberg trial and the Eichmann trial, though they probably have not heard of the Kharkov Trial--the first trial of Germans for Nazi-era crimes--or even the Dachau Trials, in which war criminals were prosecuted by the American military personnel on the former concentration camp grounds. This book uncovers ten "forgotten trials" of the Holocaust, selected from the many Nazi trials that have taken place over the course of the last seven decades. It showcases how perpetrators of the Holocaust were dealt with in courtrooms around the world--in the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Israel, France, Poland, the United States and Germany--revealing how different legal systems responded to the horrors of the Holocaust. The book provides a graphic picture of the genocidal campaign against the Jews through eyewitness testimony and incriminating documents and traces how the public memory of the Holocaust was formed over time. The volume covers a variety of trials--of high-ranking statesmen and minor foot soldiers, of male and female concentration camps guards and even trials in Israel of Jewish Kapos--to provide the first global picture of the laborious efforts to bring perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice. As law professors and litigators, the authors provide distinct insights into these trials. "--

Meet Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax. She is standing next to the dress that my grandmother wore during the time she was in Oederan. She never took it off, and every week she would bend over and the Nazis would paint an X and stripe down her backside. The dress was initially given to her in Auschwitz. Ruth Goldschmiedova Saxs life story begins in Moravia in 1928, where she lived comfortably as an only child with her parents. At the age of eleven, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, and life changed for everyone. By 1941, the family found themselves getting off a transport train in Theresienstadt, where Ruth was forced to grow up quickly. She was shaved to prevent lice infestation, her feet were wrapped in paper to keep them warm in the winter, and she witnessed the deaths of many. Separated from her father, she survived awful circumstances, only to be sent to Auschwitz in 1944, where she faced Dr. Mengele half a dozen times. Finally, with G-ds help and liberation, she was reunited in 1945 with her mother and father, a miracle within itself. Ruth later immigrated to America, where she married Kurt Sax, whom she had met at age seven. This memoir narrates the dramatic life circumstances that led her from her birthplace in central Czechoslovakia to three concentration camps and finally to her home in America. Future plans are to find a museum for this dress so that it can be displayed accordingly for all to see and to remind us to never forget.

The Holocaust: Never Forget examines the history of European violence and hatred toward the Jews; the events that led to World War II and the Holocaust; measures that isolated Jews and paved the way for mass murder; the establishment of the concentration-camp system and the extermination camps; and other groups of Holocaust victims. The book also pays tribute to rescuers who risked their lives to save besieged Jews. Finally, The Holocaust: Never Forget covers the liberation of the death camps, the efforts of survivors to rebuild their lives, and the lessons to be garnered from this horrifying tragedy as well as the continuing heartbreak of hate crime and genocide in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The children of Auschwitz: this is the darkest spot in the ocean of suffering that was the Holocaust. They were deported to the concentration camp with their families, with most being murdered in the gas chambers upon their arrival, or were born there under unimaginable circumstances. While 232,000 children and juveniles were deported to Auschwitz, only 750 were liberated in the death camp at the end of January 1945. Most of them were under 15 years of age. Alwin Meyer's masterwork is the culmination of decades of research and interviews with the children and their descendants, sensitively reconstructing their stories before, during and after Auschwitz. The camp would remain with them throughout their lives: on their forearms, as a tattooed number, and in their minds, in the memory of heart-rending separation from parents and siblings, medical experiments, abject confusion, ceaseless hunger and a perpetual longing for home and security. Once the purported liberation came, there was no blueprint for piecing together personal biographies after the unthinkable had happened. Many of the children, often orphaned, had forgotten their names or ages, and had only fragmented understandings of where they came from. While some struggled to reconnect to the parents from whom they had been separated, others had known nothing other than the camp. Some children grew up without the ability to trust and to play. Survival is not yet life – it is an in-between stage which requires individuals to learn how to live. The liberated children had to learn how to be young again in order to grow into adults like others did. This remarkable book tells the stories of the most vulnerable victims of the Nazis’ systematic attempt to extinguish innocent lives, and rescues their voices from historical oblivion. It is a unique testimony to the horrific suffering endured by millions in humanity’s darkest hour.

This is history that we should never be allowed to forget. Holocaust: We Shall Never Forget, Nor Allow It To Happen Again includes a unique collection of photographs and material from the Imperial War Museum's archives that will describe the causes and effects of the Nazi's persecution. Interest in colour photography from this period in the second world war has grown, with several highly publicised series being shown on terrestrial television. Whether a military fan or not, this superb book is totally original and will be of great interest to many.